


the mirror I stare into

by dorypop



Series: fifteen years later [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Canonical Child Abuse, Doctor Adam Parrish, Farmer Ronan Lynch, Foster Care, Future Fic, Gen, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, M/M, POV Adam Parrish, POV Ronan Lynch, Past Child Abuse, food allergies, selective mutism, there's a very brief mention of a suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24931516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorypop/pseuds/dorypop
Summary: “And the last option, which is probably the hardest but the best one, is that you tell me what’s going on and I in exchange promise to do my best to help you so that you don’t have to be afraid to come to the doctor ever again.” Somehow, Adam had managed to maintain a stable voice through all that. He swallowed and hid the trembling of his leg under the table.(Adam and Ronan foster a kid. It rains a lot.)
Relationships: Ronan Lynch & Adam Parrish & Original Character(s), Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: fifteen years later [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867762
Comments: 116
Kudos: 279





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mariagvogel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariagvogel/gifts).



> Once upon a time, I told [@mariagvogel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariagvogel/pseuds/mariagvogel) I had an idea for a fic in which Adam and Ronan fostered a kid. Very excitedly, she prompted me to start writing it right then. I, also excitedly, pointed out that I was at the moment writing something else and that, besides, I was already in bed ready to go to sleep. "Adam wouldn't mind losing sleep," she answered, which was the most inspiring thing I'd heard in a long time.

The patient’s list for the day had only informed Adam that he had a Harvey Isaac Parker at 11:15 am—it didn’t say the kid’s age or what was wrong with him or if he’d been to the clinic before. The name didn’t ring a bell, but Adam had only been working there for three and a half years and most healthy kids stopped being brought to the doctor when they outgrew the toddler phase.

So that Thursday in October, at 11:13 am, he took a sip from his bottle of water and stretched his back until it popped and pressed the little button on his desk that made a light go green on top of his door, which meant the next patient could come in.

“Enter,” he called at the knock on the door, and plastered his patient-calming smile on his face to hide the bags under his eyes—he hadn’t slept much the previous night.

A kid came in.

Harvey Isaac Parker, presumably. Around twelve years old.

The kid closed the door after himself.

“You must be Harvey,” Adam said, standing up and immediately missing the comfort of his ergonomic chair.

The kid nodded.

“Please sit down,” Adam offered. Nobody else came in. “Have you come by yourself, Harvey?”

Harvey nodded again, and started biting his lower lip.

Adam sat back down. He hummed when he noticed the glossy look on the kid’s bloodshot eyes.

“Do you have a consent paper signed by your legal guardian, then?” Adam asked, very carefully not losing his smile.

The kid’s hands remained diligently still on his lap, but his teeth looked close to piercing a hole through his chapped lips. He shook his head, violently, only once.

“All right, then. That might be a little problem, because the law says I’m not really allowed to examine you unless you’ve got a guardian or a consent form with you. However,” Adam added, not letting the kid’s eyes stray from him, “there’s nothing preventing us from talking a little bit, if you’d like, after I write here that you actually didn’t show up for your appointment.”

Harvey seemed to consider this, because he took a minute before he presented his right hand on Adam’s table.

“Something wrong with your hand?” Adam asked. The kid pointed at his wrist with his other hand, and slowly rolled his sleeve up so that Adam could see the bruising on his dark skin.

Adam, as a rule, didn’t like bruises. They did actually help doctors like him to pinpoint where the problem was and how old it was and how much it might hurt but, in Adam’s opinion, they were ugly things that not only took a long time to heal but also seemed to scream to everyone in sight that there was something wrong with you that needed fixing.

He nodded, and turned his desk lamp on to better see what he was looking at, and fought the need to purse his lips at how the bruising likely meant Harvey Parker’s wrist was broken and how he hadn’t still uttered a single word.

“This must hurt a lot, right?” he said, trying and failing to make small talk to entertain the kid’s mind while inside his own he was trying to reign in several frantic ideas that wouldn’t really help the kid and also involved breaking a few laws.

Harvey shrugged using only his left shoulder, and Adam felt something really revolting pool down in his belly.

“Can’t say for sure without an X-ray, but I’d say it’s most likely broken,” he said. “That leaves us with a few options I’d like you to consider.” Harvey blinked, but didn’t remove his hand from Adam’s desk, so Adam took this as an incentive to keep talking. A quick glance to the clock on his telephone’s screen told him he still had four more minutes until his next patient’s appointment. “I’d need you guardian’s consent for that X-ray and for any meds I could give you for the pain, and then we’d probably just need to immobilize it for a few weeks and you’d be as good as new.” He made sure to speak clearly but quickly, because he could see Harvey’s body was starting to freeze and that meant he might want to stop listening to his other options. “You can of course leave it like it is and given your age it’ll eventually set and stop hurting so much, _but_ it wouldn’t set right and you’ll have problems with it for years to come.” Adam’s hardened look ensured Harvey didn’t immediately jump to take this option. “And the last option, which is probably the hardest but the best one, is that you tell me what’s going on and I in exchange promise to do my best to help you so that you don’t have to be afraid to come to the doctor ever again.” Somehow, Adam had managed to maintain a stable voice through all that. He swallowed and hid the trembling of his leg under the table.

Harvey’s breathing peaked before it settled down once more.

He took his hand back and cradled it against his stomach.

The telephone’s clock told Adam he was running late.

“Is your wrist the only thing they broke, Harvey?” he whispered. Harvey’s teeth released his lip, but it was already too late—a little blood bead glinted in the lamp’s light.

Harvey’s left hand travelled tremulously towards the backpack he’d left leaning against his chair. He took a phone from the outer pocket.

Adam watched him unblock it and waited until the slow, one-handed typing was completed.

_i just need a pill or sth i can take_ , it said. Adam shook his head, not unkindly, because Harvey had yet to leave the room, and he _had_ actually come to the clinic, which was a long way in terms of asking for help.

Harvey was still silent, but he was screaming at Adam.

And Adam was listening.

“Will you let me make some calls, Harvey?” he gently asked, waiting until the kid sighed and nodded before picking his handset. He dialed the front desk’s extension.

“Dr. Parrish?” Adam would always be impressed by the receptionist’s astoundingly memory, that could match every extension to its owner after a brief glance. He wasn’t very impressed with the rest of her, probably because she had a thing for hitting on Ronan at Christmas gatherings.

“Hi, Liz. It’s Adam, yes.”

“Are you running a bit late?” He also didn’t like how she always seemed to be teasing him on the phone.

“More than that, really. I’m having an emergency, so I’ll need my schedule clear for at least a couple hours.”

“Okay. Rose won’t mind taking a few of your patients.” Adam could practically see Liz’s impish smile, because Rose would _definitely_ mind taking Adam’s patients. Rose Kumar was the only other pediatrician in the clinic but they had never seen eye to eye. He sighed, but didn’t protest. “Need someone in there with you?”

Adam hadn’t stopped looking at Harvey, who was himself quite focused on the black screen of his phone. But he searched him with more intent before answering, and made his decision.

“No, but you could do me a favor and call Sadie White for me, if you don’t mind?”

“As in Mrs Wintry White from CPS? Not a fun kind of emergency, then?” Adam grit his teeth, but made a point of carefully inhaling through his nose before answering.

“No, Liz, not a fun one. Can you call her or not?”

“’Course I can, hun. I’ll hang up, then.”

“I’ll also need an X-ray as soon as possible,” Adam said, before hanging up himself. Harvey finally looked up, and blinked at Adam with eyes that seemed not to have slept for days on end.

Adam was unfortunately very familiar with disrupted sleeping patterns.

He took his chair and brought it around his desk, until he was sitting right in front of Harvey.

“This is what is going to happen now,” he said, and started outlining the next few hours for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprising facts I’ve learnt while researching for this fic include:  
> 1) people can visit a pediatrician in the US even when they’re in their twenties  
> 2) Matthew and William were popular baby names in the US in 2008 and  
> 3) selective and traumatic mutism are similar but not the same.
> 
> I also have no real idea how clinics work in the US—I’ve just used what I know of how they work where I live and added a bit of imagination and this is what we got.
> 
> Title from a haiku by Murakami Kijo: First autumn morning / the mirror I stare into / shows my father's face
> 
> You can also find me [on tumblr!](https://hklnvgl.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

Ronan was aware he had a somewhat non-conventional relationship with phones. Most people his age loved their phones—they used them to constantly check their e-mails and to put calls through and to track their kids’ own phones to follow them around. Ronan had to admit they were sometimes useful, like when you had to queue by yourself and could justify not being social to the strangers around you by opening a stupid, mind-numbing game on your phone while pretending you were tending to pressing, important matters. They were also useful when you had to spend time away from Adam Parrish but you missed him so you texted him weird memes just to have the pleasure of seeing his name pop up on the notifications.

But Ronan had always been like that with phones, and he was proud to be able to say he could perfectly leave his uncharged and laying at the bottom of a straw bale for days and still be happy.

Which was why he felt weirdly self-conscious when he realized it was past Adam’s lunch break and he still hadn’t got an answer to his last text, which consisted of an artful piece composed entirely of eggplant emojis.

Of course, Ronan wasn’t about to call the clinic to check on Adam just because he’d failed to get ahold of him for a few hours. He wasn’t that kind of person, thank you very much.

He’d just stare at his phone until it rang, because maybe the thing just needed a bit of motivation to work like it should. And the best motivation for such a dreadful machine was always a threatening glare, in Ronan’s opinion.

If he jumped a little when it _finally_ went off, dropping the shirt he’d been folding to get all wrinkled after having spent _minutes_ ironing it, it was nobody’s business. Not that there was anybody around to rat him out, anyway.

“Adam?” he said to the speaker, a bit too out of breath to fool anyone.

“Hey, sorry. I should’ve called earlier. Is everything all right?”

“’Course it is.” Ronan narrowed his eyes, but Adam wasn’t there to see him do it. He was the one who sounded like he’d swallowed a full bucket of goat piss, anyway, so he forced himself to ask. “Are _you_ all right?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Still have two hours to go here, though, and _of course_ Rose isn’t happy with any of this and Liz is being her usual self and I just remembered we were supposed to buy some gas bottles this weekend but I forgot to remind you and—”

“Adam.” Ronan could almost see him raking a hand through his unfairly stunning hair, getting it all tousled up in that way that was _cute_ when they were teenagers and probably now only gained him a few disapproving glances from some uptight soccer mom whose kid had broken a leg. Ronan would punch any unpleasant lady any day of the week, though, if only Adam would let him. “What’s wrong?”

“I just would like to hug you right now,” he admitted, in a very small voice. Ronan closed his eyes and let his back rest against that one cabinet in the laundry room that Opal had once deemed too flawless for her liking and that now supported a very detailed print of one of her hooves.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I might have failed this kid by giving him false hopes that everything was going to be okay. It never is, and I should have known better, but—”

That was not a real answer to Ronan’s question, but Adam sounded so distressed Ronan was willing to let it pass. Just this once.

“Where’s the kid now?”

“In protective custody.”

 _Fuck_ , Ronan thought. “Fuck,” he said out loud.

“He’s just twelve. He came by himself with a broken wrist and he wouldn’t say a word. He just—He looked so afraid, like he was going to _bolt_ any minute, you know? I didn’t want him to go back to where he came from, but—Fuck, Ronan.”

“I know,” Ronan said, because he did. He remembered all too well, how tightly Adam had gripped the BMW’s seatbelt, that evening, when he hadn’t really wanted to get out of the car. How Ronan had let him go anyway, how it had all turned out.

“The hard part has just started for him—they’re placing him on a group home.”

“You did the right thing, Parrish. You helped him, even if he can’t see it right now.” The kid was probably happier than Adam himself would have been, if he’d been the one removed from the trailer park at 12. Adam was just that special brand of stubborn.

“He didn’t look mad, but—”

“Yeah,” Ronan agreed.

“I have to go,” Adam whispered, and Ronan wished he could get to the clinic and give him that hug. He probably could—it was only forty minutes away. But Adam would surely not appreciate him interrupting his work and therefore delaying his coming home, where he was _certainly_ getting a hug. Ronan wasn’t planning on letting him go before the next morning’s alarm rang.

“Every kid deserves to feel safe at home, Adam,” Ronan softly said, before the line cut off.

He sighed, and fumbled around for the shirt he’d been holding when the phone had rung. He brought it to his nose—Adam had started buying that fabric softener brand when he’d gone away to college, and never stopped.

He should get started on dinner, because he wasn’t going to leave Adam’s side to _cook_ when he finally got home.


	3. Chapter 3

Sadie White was not nicknamed Mrs Wintry White due to her sunny disposition. Adam didn’t usually care for nicknames—he hadn’t when he’d actually attended middle school and he wasn’t about to start caring now—but even he had to admit it was, if nothing else, accurate.

Adam thought he’d never seen her smile. Not even a smirk. She was part of the reason Adam tried to use a kind tone when talking to his patients—the biggest effort came when it came to his patients’ _parents_.

So it came to nobody’s surprise when Sadie White came to the clinic in her pantsuit and collected Harvey Isaac Parker without a shadow of sympathy in the twitch of her coral-painted lips.

It just made Adam’s blood boil, because she wasn’t any kinder to the children in her charge, and something screamed in Adam’s deaf ear that Harvey was the kind of kid who needed at least a bit of encouragement. Especially when he was nursing a broken wrist and obviously suffered from some kind of traumatic mutism and was about to be removed from the only home he had ever known.

He’d extensively complained about all of this in Ronan’s understanding arms, the previous night, and had only stopped when a stray thought had come to him—Ronan also looked quite unapproachable at first sight, but he actually was the most compassionate soul Adam had ever known. Was Sadie White of the same brand—cold on the outside, burning-hot on the inside? The fact that he was even thinking about her while being held by Ronan Lynch demonstrated the sorry state of Adam’s mind at that moment. Ronan’s advise on the matter was to simply go to sleep.

So Adam had, and he’d woken up in the morning and taken a shower and driven to the clinic. He’d exchanged polite but mildly uncomfortable words with Rose Kumar at the front desk, while Liz nursed a cup of coffee from the huge thermos she normally brought from home.

He’d sat at his desk and started his computer and ogled through his patient list for the day and asked Liz to put a call through Mrs White’s office.

Liz was substantially more helpful than Sadie White, and that was the shape Adam’s morning had decided to adopt. Lunch break couldn’t come quickly enough.

After an exhausting twenty-minutes discussion that left him realizing he was getting nowhere with his somewhat gentle approach, he directly asked Mrs White where exactly they had placed Harvey.

“It is customary, as I’m quite sure you already know, Dr Parrish, for children in suspected child abuse cases to be placed in group homes, at least temporarily.”

Adam was quite sure he was holding his speaker with a bit more force than it was strictly necessary. He was already late for his first appointment of the day.

“Yes, Mrs White, I am aware of that. That is why I am asking you to please tell me which of the group homes in this town currently houses Mr Parker.”

“Then you might also know, Dr Parrish, that I am under no obligation to provide you with this information, as this particular group home has a different clinic assigned to it. I can certainly assure you that all of young Harvey’s medical needs will be appropriately addressed.”

Adam could picture Mrs Wintry White clicking away Harvey’s file, typing whatever they needed to type in whatever programme they used at CPS computers to signal that they had done their job and the children were safe and sound wherever they had placed them. As if the broken wrist and his removal from his house were all of Harvey’s _needs._

“I do not doubt that, Mrs White,” Adam said, after taking a deep breath. “I simply wish to follow-up on my patient.”

“The thing is, Dr Parrish,” Sadie White said, and Adam could smell her want to wrap up the conversation, “he is no longer your patient. You need not concern you with—”

“Please,” Adam said. And he must have let _something_ slip through that single syllable, or in the whisper of the _s_ , because after a few tense moments Mrs Wintry White told him an address.

Adam thanked her after carefully writing it down and welcomed in his first patient. A call wouldn’t do, he considered after gifting one little girl a shiny sticker for her valiant efforts in remaining still while measured, because he doubted Harvey would actually benefit from Adam asking questions he wasn’t going to answer to, at least not through a phone. He would have to visit.

He texted Ronan on his lunch break that he’d be late for dinner. He didn’t give him more details, because he was aware Ronan would not completely approve of what he was about to do and he really didn’t need discouraging words right then. Besides, Ronan would just be a big hypocrite, because Adam’s visit to Harvey was just a tiny kindness, like Ronan’s old one when he’d offered to teach teen Adam how to fight.

So he muscled through the day and closed the blinds after his last patient had left, and put on his jacket with the firm purpose of visiting Harvey Parker at the group home. Just to assess the situation, he told himself.

He drove in silence. He couldn’t find the right building at first—it was just a regular house in the suburbs, front lawn mown and geraniums decorating the second-store balcony, with nothing more than a small plaque next to the ringing bell to signal he was facing a group home and not a _normal_ home.

A middle-aged lady opened the door. She stared at him. Adam stared back.

“Good evening, Ma’am,” he finally said. “I was wondering if you’d be so kind to let me speak for a minute with Harvey Parker, please?”

The woman was not impressed, but he yelled for Harvey and held the door open for Adam without any other enquire. Adam wondered if she’d have done the same, had it been Harvey’s previous guardians in the door, politely asking to see him.

He hid a shiver by pocketing his hands in his jacket.

“Hi, Harvey. You remember me, right?” Adam said, when he saw the kid slowly coming down the stairs, his right wrist trapped in his cast.

Harvey got to the final step. Adam decided to interpret his long stare as a question.

“Yeah, I wanted to see how you were doing. Are you settling in all right?” Harvey just blinked, but that was fair, because Adam’s question had been a bad one. Adam tried a little smile. “Yeah, that was a bit lame, sorry. Does your wrist hurt a lot?” He got a shrugged shoulder as an answer. “How many other kids live here?”

Adam took it as a victory when Harvey, still not looking away from Adam, came down the last step and took his phone out of his pajama pants’ pocket.

 _6_ , the message said.

“Older or younger than you?”

_both_

“That must be hard.” Harvey pocketed his phone, apparently done with that line of conversation. Adam nodded. “They told me your mom has been released,” he said, because he believed in sheltering children but also in telling people what they needed to know.

Harvey gasped. He looked at the front door behind Adam, and upstairs where he’d come from. He took his phone out again. He hesitated, fingers still, hovering over the keyboard. Slowly, because he was doing it one-handed and because he kept stealing glances at Adam, he began typing.

_m i going back with her?_

Adam took a step back, feeling Harvey needed a bit of space.

“Not for now,” he said. “There will be a court hearing, but it was clear from what she said had happened that she can not take care of you at the moment.” Harvey was listening, Adam could tell. Listening like he needed Adam’s words to breathe. He probably couldn’t make sense of them, anyway. Mrs Parker was unfit to have children, yet she’d had Harvey for twelve years. It didn’t make sense to Adam, and he had almost twenty years and brief memories from his Psychiatry PCE on him. “I’m sorry,” he added, even though he knew it wouldn’t help Harvey in the slightest to know a stranger like Adam cared that his mother was a piece of shit.

He wasn’t sure what else he could say. He didn’t know what Harvey needed, because he didn’t know Harvey at all. He didn’t know what _he_ would have needed if he’d been in Harvey’s situation. He didn’t know what he _had_ needed when he’d been in his own _situation_. He remembered asking people—Gansey, mostly—to leave him be and mind his own business, back then, but he also remembered asking himself why nobody ever did or say anything to help. He’d wanted attention, but not too much. He’d wanted to leave but he’d made himself stay.

He smiled at Harvey again.

“If you need anything, just ask somebody to call the clinic, okay?” He waited until Harvey had nodded in understanding before making his way towards the door. “If you want, I can stop by tomorrow again? It’s a Saturday, so I’ll bring my partner along, if that’s okay?”

Harvey did this thing with his mouth that was not quite a smile but wanted to be. Adam barely hid the spring in his step when he walked out the house, towards his car.


	4. Chapter 4

Adam had bought raspberry ice cream on his way home—he liked it a lot, Ronan had discovered over the years, but almost never indulged himself, because of some stupid issue with ice cream not providing essential nutrients and being too sugary for how much it cost or something like that.

“Join me?” he asked, taking two spoons out of the drawer without waiting for Ronan’s reply. That alone justified Ronan’s attentive scrutiny—dinner was ready and waiting in the oven, and Adam had always been ridiculously meticulous at taking his meals in the proper order. Ronan suspected it was a habit learnt from having to provide for himself a sorry imitation of a balanced diet back when he’d lived in St Agnes, where he hadn’t even had a proper kitchen.

But Adam wasn’t explaining his sudden ice cream craving and he was already setting a movie when Ronan joined him on the couch, so he supposed he _could_ make an exception and eat dessert before fuck else.

“How are your pumpkins growing?” Adam asked. Ronan had been distracted by his licking on his spoon, but he pretended to have been engrossed in the car chase on the screen and Adam pretended he believed that.

“Fucking awesome,” Ronan said, and he had intended to leave it at that, but Adam gently hummed and somehow found a way to press himself still _closer_ to Ronan’s side and Ronan found himself telling him everything there needed to be told about radishes.

Something exploded in the movie, and Ronan noticed how Adam’s spoon had not moved from its ice cream stabbing position for a while. He gently took the container away from Adam’s unmoving hands, and even remembered to put a napkin between the wet condensation and the coffee table.

“You’re not even listening, are you?”

Adam blinked.

“Oh. Sorry. I’m sorry. Radishes. Yes. Keep going. I’m here.”

“Don’t sweat it, Parrish.”

Adam’s face crumbled. Ronan didn’t appreciate that happening, so he made a point of stealing Adam’s cold fingers and pressing a kiss to each nuckle.

“It’s nothing, really,” Adam sighed. “I asked. I wanna know about farm stuff.”

“Don’t worry, I’m planning on buying a radish encyclopaedia or some shit just to memorize random radishes facts and throw them at you when you least expect them. I’ll even write them down on the shampoo bottle so you have something to entertain you when you take a shit.”

Adam’s mouth attempted a smirk. Ronan waited until he was ready to speak.

“It’s—I nagged Sadie White from CPS ‘til she told me where they took Harvey.” Oh, yes. Ronan should have known. Harvey Parker and his broken wrist. “And I—went. To visit him.”

Ronan grunted.

“I promised I’d visit him tomorrow again.”

It was Ronan’s turn to sigh. “Okay. How’s he doing?”

“Wanna come?”

Ronan dropped Adam’s hand. Adam collected it and carefully brought it to his lap, where it joined its sister. If Adam was trying to prevent him from getting distracted, it was working.

“What?” he asked, although he had heard Adam perfectly. “Why?”

“Dunno.” That meant he _did_ know, but he wasn’t ready to admit it out loud just yet. “He’s a great kid,” he added, probably as an answer to Ronan’s narrowed look.

Ronan snorted.

“Has he spoken yet?”

Adam straightened his spine. They weren’t exactly out of each other’s space, but for some reason Adam seemed to be very far away from Ronan.

“No,” he admitted. He looked down for maybe two seconds before forcefully linking his eyes with Ronan’s. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

Ronan didn’t say what _he_ thought it meant, because he didn’t need to irate Adam unnecessarily and because, really, the poor kid was probably just as fucked up as everyone else in the world.

“So you want me to come,” he clarified, trying to get the conversation back on track.

“Yes, that’s why I asked. You don’t have to, though, if you don’t want to.”

Ronan started twisting his armbands around. It was just some kid with very bad luck. Nothing he couldn’t handle. Nothing _Adam_ couldn’t handle.

“Shut up,” he said, picking the ice cream again. He didn’t want to eat it anymore, so he figured it was a good moment to store it in the freezer. “I’m fucking coming,” he said, standing up.

Adam’s face didn’t betray his thoughts, but that only meant he was having _a lot_ of thoughts.

“Okay,” he said.

Ronan nodded and took the ice cream to the kitchen. He started taking shit out of the cupboards to set the table.

“Ronan?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve ruined your appetite, because you’re having some of this like it or not,” Ronan said, already piling roasted vegetables in a plate for Adam.

“Would you—?”

Adam’s socked feet had stopped so the kitchen island stood between them. Ronan started slicing some bread.

“Parrish. What.”

“Hypothetically,” Adam began, _finally_ bringing his dilly-dallying ass to connect with his stool, “would you maybe consider fostering children? Like, a child.”

“A child,” Ronan repeated, because apparently he’d stopped understanding English.

“Yes. Singular.”

“What the hell, Adam.” Ronan set his own plate down on the counter, with so much force that a especially wild piece of broccoli toppled down from the mountain he’d crafted. “Nobody would trust _us_ with a child, Parrish. You know that.” Ronan didn’t really need CPS people coming and going through his _home_ and second-guessing all his decisions.

Adam righted his fork, which had been tossed by Ronan into the general proximity of his plate.

“Why not? We could provide for them. We have the space and the resources. Some kids—Some kids just need—”

Adam’s eyes had got lost somewhere beyond the sink. Ronan checked, just in case there was really something out there being incredibly untimely, but the only threat present in the kitchen at that specific point of time was Adam’s fuckingly huge heart.

“Adam,” he softly called. Blue eyes turned back to him, which was good news because he was getting old to be getting on unexpected rescue missions from scrying accidents.

“You said that every kid deserves to feel safe at home,” Adam whispered, and Ronan felt the sting of his own words being thrown back to him.

He took a deep breath. He had said that, yes.

He realized he missed Adam so he uttered a mental _fuck you_ at the vegetables and rounded the island so he could hug him. Adam’s body felt _so_ right against him that he felt tempted to just agree to everything Adam asked. He reigned himself—they still had secrets to keep, and dangerous things to keep away, and that didn’t go well with the concept of children.

“I’ll just go with you tomorrow, okay? And we’ll see.” He kissed Adam’s temple.

“This looks amazing,” Adam said, meaning the vegetables.

“You have already helped that kid, Adam. What you did was fucking important—You gave him a way out.”

“Just getting out isn’t enough.” Adam wiggled out of Ronan’s embrace—probably lured in by his staggering cooking skills’ final product. Ronan let him go.

“Look,” he said, glaring at the vegetables as if they were at fault. “I get that this is making you revisit some stuff or something—” He lost his train of thought, because Adam Parrish was sitting in the kitchen, holding a fork with so much care he looked afraid a single whisper would make it break.

He didn’t finish his sentence.

“You’d be great with a kid,” Adam said, off-handedly, after he’d filled his mouth with vegetables three times in a row.

Ronan snorted.

“What are you talking about, Parrish.” He sat down to eat, too. “I’m big and scary, I’ll have you know.”

It was Adam’s turn to snort.

“You’re soft and perfect pillow material, _and you know that._ ”

Ronan finished his dinner. In the morning, they went to the group home.

Harvey Parker looked flimsy and terrified, but Ronan noticed he leaned a bit forward on his chair as he listened to Adam’s one-sided conversation, while Ronan glared in silence at every magnet on the fridge of the kitchen they’d been ushered into.

Ronan also noticed Adam had this determined look when he fastened his seatbelt, back in the car.

Ronan liked it when Adam was passionate about things.

As Adam drove them both back home, he _thought_ about what Adam had asked for the first time.

He didn’t mind kids. He actually tolerated them more than he tolerated adults, on most days. Adam was probably, in a glaringly obvious move of his subconscious, looking for a therapeutical way of coming to terms with his own past—that was not really a good enough reason to take in a kid, but it would make Adam happy if they did. Ronan did not really believe in fostering—what were you supposed to do, just care for a child temporarily and them leave them behind as you took another one in? Ronan didn’t think he could do that.

Ronan did not really believe in thinking deeply about stuff—Adam must have been rubbing off on him.

He told Adam to make the call as soon as they were parked in the Barns.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s some homophobic language somewhere towards the end of this, as well as mentions of child abuse throughout the chapter. There's also some pie-making to make up for the rest of it.

Adam had wanted to bake something before Sadie White’s house visit, because he’d heard somewhere that real estate agents bake cookies in the houses they’re showing before their buyers come so that the place smells homey and cozy and they feel more willing to spend thousands of dollars in it. He didn’t really know if it worked, because he’d never actually purchased a house and while he’d rented a few different apartments while in college he’d cared more about things like _is the heating cost included_ or _how many months is the lease again_ than, you know, _smell_.

The problem was—Adam _hated_ baking. He hated how many different pots and spoons you had to use, and how sometimes you needed to wait fifteen minutes so that the baking soda did its thing, and how you sometimes forgot you’d bought rainbow sprinkles and used them once and then five years later you found the almost-full bottle right at the bottom of a cupboard only to realise it was expired. He knew it was all chemistry and he knew it was supposed to be all right as long as you followed the recipe. It was just difficult to treat it as a lab experiment when said recipe was written in Persephone’s disorderly handwriting—Calla had given him her old notebooks after a particularly productive spring cleaning—or in Aurora’s tidy one—Ronan had convinced Matthew that the Barns was the perfect place to safekeep her cookie cards.

Besides, Ronan seemed to enjoy using a mixer and Adam liked how Ronan looked on an apron.

Therefore, Ronan usually did the baking. He just didn’t want to bake for Sadie White.

“If a Victoria sponge cake is all this lady needs to decide we’re fit to be parents then there’s something seriously wrong with the system,” he said, which _of course_ made Ronan sound reasonable and Adam look like he was freaking out.

Which he _was_ , clearly, but Adam only needed Mrs White not to figure that out. Although it was perhaps better to show her they cared by not hiding how much they wanted this?

“Of course there’s a lot wrong with the system, Lynch. I just think we need to make a good impression, and be on our best behaviour and—” Ronan’s raised eyebrow made him pause and revisit his last sentence. “God, I sound like _Gansey_.”

“Please don’t stop on my account. I’ll go check in on the crops.”

Ronan left, and Adam took a moment to reign in all the parts of himself that thought Gansey would be infinitely better suited to host a house visit by Mrs Wintry White than he was. Then, he rolled his sleeves and browsed the Internet for a simple enough recipe on his phone.

Lemon pie didn’t make the kitchen smell like lemons—which was probably a good thing, anyway—but it gave them something to hold into while Sadie White sat at the dining room table, eyeing the curtainless window as if the fact that it didn’t have a curtain was a personal affront to her and not the result of one off-handedly comment made by Declan two Thanksgivings ago about how the old ones reminded him of childhood. Ronan had packed the curtains and sent them to him as a Christmas present, but as far as Adam knew Declan hadn’t hung them in his own house. The trailer hadn’t had any curtains, either, and he’d never minded as a child, so Adam failed to see how they would be of any importance to Harvey.

He cleared his throat to bring Mrs White’s attention back to the matter at hand.

“Do you want some more coffee?” he asked, taking a sip of his own cup.

She shook her head—it looked like she wanted to pull a muscle.

“You’ve shown me the house. What about the rest of the property? I’d like to see those barns you have out there. To certify they’re safe for children”

“You can’t,” Ronan growled, before Adam could exercise any kind of damage control.

“They’re always closed, anyway,” Adam said. “So when do you think we’ll get our license approved? We’ve got Harvey’s room already prepared—it just needs a bit of paint and it’ll be ready.”

Sadie White’s lips did a somersaulty thing that Adam didn’t know how to interpret.

“Harvey would have to change school districts, if he came to live here,” she said.

“I could drop him off every morning so he doesn’t have to, or if he wants he could go to school in Henrietta instead.”

“I can drop him off,” Ronan said, which was helpful. Adam felt a very pressing need to kiss the frown out of his face—he held back because it wouldn’t have been appropriate.

“Right. Because you don’t have a job, is that right, Mr Lynch?”

Ronan took a very long time to swallow a small bite of pie. Adam had forgotten to ask him if he thought it tasted any good.

“I run a farm, Mrs White,” Ronan eventually said. “I grow vegetables and sell them for a profit.”

“Is that so,” Sadie White said, and wrote something on her notepad. “Dr Parrish,” she called, without looking up, “there is another matter I wish to discuss.” Adam nodded, hiding his very sweaty hand in the handle of his cup. “You pressed charges against your father at the age of—”

“Seventeen,” Adam provided, unwilling to wait while she paged through her notes.

“Child abuse, if I’m not mistaken,” she continued, as if they were talking about the weather.

“You are not.”

“Have you seen a therapist or counselor since then? Would you say you are emotionally prepared to take in a child who has been abused himself?”

Adam opened his mouth. He felt cold, despite the heat coming from his coffee. He realized he couldn’t really afford to waste time pondering about the right answer. He had no idea what the right answer was.

“Yes,” he finally, very quietly, said.

He was too coward to look at Ronan. He wished they’d had this meeting in the living room, which was often used, as opposed to this dining room they almost never dined in. He wished he was sitting in the couch next to Ronan, so that his hand could creep towards him and crawl into Ronan’s comforting one.

Mrs White didn’t look convinced. Adam had probably fucked up his and Harvey’s chances to make this work.

It was a good thing they hadn’t told Harvey they were trying to foster him, in case it finally blew up.

“You know, Mrs White,” Ronan’s voice filled the room, “they weren’t so _incisive_ when they first interviewed us to get our license.”

“What do you mean?” Sadie White’s question echoed Adam’s thoughts. Adam fixed a very blank look in her blouses’ collar.

“This is just a renewal, right? Everything was in place then, it should be in place now.”

“Wait a minute.” Mrs White’s untouched slice of pie got shoved towards the center of the table, as she poured a stack of papers from her briefcase. “I don’t have any records of you having fostered any child before.”

Ronan snorted, and it sounded so very _grounding_ that Adam allowed himself to relax a notch the fierce grip he still had on the china.

“That’s because we haven’t. We got the license, but never actually took in any child, then something with one of my brothers came up and it ran out of date. That’s why we’re doing all of this.”

“That is _not_ what we have in our—”

Ronan’s sudden standing up interrupted her. “I’ll just have to bring you the expired license, then.”

Ronan shuffled out of the room, leaving Adam sitting in front of that crisp woman, who kept frantically searching through her documents as if they could tell her what was going on.

They wouldn’t, Adam knew when Ronan came back and shoved a fostering license _on their names_ under her nose. Ronan had dreamt that. Ronan had refused to help him bake but he had dreamt a forged license and was _lying_ to this woman’s face.

“This can’t be right. This can’t be approved! You’re not married, you’re two _men_! How was this approved?”

Mrs White looked on the verge of having a stroke. Despite his Hypocratic oath, Adam would be in no rush to go to her help.

“I’ll e-mail you a copy,” Ronan said through gritted teeth.

“If you do not approve the renewal of our license based on the fact that we are both men, I will certainly be sueing you for discrimination, Mrs White,” Adam added, getting to his feet as well.

Wintry White seemed to realize she was the only one still sitting down, because she rapidly stood up. She didn’t lose any efficiency as she gathered all her papers.

“You’ll be hearing from me,” she finally said, curtly and clearly unhappy. Adam hoped it was a good sign.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I have no idea how these interviews are normally conducted, nor do I approve of Ronan’s methods of getting away with what he wants.
> 
> Yes, I'm celebrating Adam's birthday by letting him bitch at this random asshole OC.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: mentions of abuse and suicide

Harvey didn’t own many things. Those he _did_ own—shirts that hadn’t grown at the same pace than the kid’s limbs, and two pairs of sneakers, and a letter from the public library reminding Harvey to give back his assigned reading _inside_ said assigned reading—were overflowing an old backpack that was ungracefully shoved on Ronan’s hands by the woman at the group home. Harvey himself was carrying some more clothes in a plastic bag, and Ronan promptly took that from him too to hide it in the trunk of the car.

Adam asked him if he wanted to say goodbye.

Harvey answered by sitting in the back of the car.

Adam nodded and turned to shake the woman’s hand while Ronan started the engine. The ride home promised to be a silent one—Adam swallowed his nervousness, saving it for when Harvey could answer his attempts at unobtrussive conversation, and Harvey was merely looking at the rain outside. Ronan turned the radio on.

“We’re here,” Ronan announced when he parked, half an hour later. When he checked on the rearview mirror, Harvey didn’t look very eager to leave the car and get into the house. It was heavily pouring, so Ronan supposed that was quite fair. Weird, because his house was a thousand times better than that group home where he’d been living, but he’d promised Adam and himself he’d be patient with the kid.

Adam, as usual, didn’t waste any time.

“Ronan can show you around while I get your stuff inside, okay?” he said, turning around in his seat to wait for Harvey’s nod before braving the storm.

“We can see the fields tomorrow,” Ronan offered, and cut off the engine. Harvey didn’t look impressed by the mudroom, either, even though it was dry and warm and well-lit. “Kitchen through there, there’s a dining room in there but we almost never use it, and here’s the living room.” Ronan wasn’t sure if Harvey would be most comfortable seeing those rooms or if it was enough to know they existed and he’d prefer to explore them later on his own. He didn’t move from his spot, where his pants were leaking water into the floors, so Ronan didn’t press. He kept pointing at stuff, feeling like a flight assistant. “Full bathroom’s upstairs, but there’s what my brother calls a _powder room_ just behind that door. The laundry room is over there—you can just leave your stuff in there with ours and it’ll get eventually washed, or you can use the washing machine whenever. I’ll show you later how it works, if you want.” Harvey’s interest didn’t pique at laundry rambling, so Ronan decided it was time to move to the second floor. “Right. We’ve got two empty bedrooms—we don’t get many guests, but sometimes my brothers come, or some friends. We thought you could get my old bedroom, because I’d already moved my stuff out of it and my brothers still keep a lot of shit in theirs, but if you want another room just say so. Adam and I sleep over there.” Ronan was really glad when Adam emerged from their bedroom, already changed out of his wet jeans into Ronan’s pajama bottoms.

“Do you need help unpacking?” he asked. Ronan spied that awful plastic bag on top of Harvey’s bed.

Harvey took a moment to answer. He studied his new bedroom intently, without coming inside, before turning to Adam to nod and point to his still-cast wrist.

“I’ll start on dinner, then,” Ronan said, figuring Adam was better at putting stuff away, were it confusing feelings or outgrown clothes.

They didn’t take long—Adam came back downstairs, on his own, when Ronan was still throwing vegetables in the pan.

“What are you making?” he asked, pressing a kiss to Ronan’s exposed neck.

“Pasta. Where’s Harvey?”

“I thought it was best to let him get used to his room. We’ll need to take him shopping tomorrow, by the way. He needs winter clothes.”

“And a suitcase,” Ronan added.

Adam took three glasses from the cupboard. Ronan took three deep breaths.

It was a weird evening—Harvey didn’t ask what was in the pasta sauce, but Ronan told him anyway when he started picking at it, until Harvey started eating. That didn’t last long, however, because then Chainsaw decided to pay them a visit.

Harvey dropped his fork and looked at her as if she was an apparition, which was the strongest emotion Ronan had ever seen on the kid’s face. It also prompted Adam to chase the raven away from their dinner.

“Her name’s Chainsaw,” Ronan unhelpfully said.

Harvey’s fork didn’t return to Harvey’s mouth.

 _can i go back upstairs??_ , he asked, after Adam had extinguished all the topics of light conversation he’d likely spent hours the previous night considering.

They let the kid go.

Adam hid his face in his hands, sighing deeply. Ronan pried his fingers away, because it was fucking _rude_ of Adam to prevent him from seeing his pretty face after such a day, just because he was feeling a bit out of depth.

“What’s the diagnose, Mr Doctor?”

Adam snorted. “It’ll be fine, right?”

Ronan started kissing Adam’s knuckles, because if he had his mouth occupied he didn’t have to lie to him. He wanted it to be fine, but he didn’t know. He _hoped_ it’d be fine.

He later put what little pasta had remained in the pan with what Harvey hadn’t eaten in a fancy reusable container that wasn’t plastic but was instead made with some save-the-whales shit—Blue’s last Christmas present—and shoved it in the top shelf of the freezer, with a tag that said _Harvey’s welcome night_.

They went shopping the following day—it wasn’t great, because clothes shopping in general had never been Ronan’s preferred activity, but they stopped for lunch and Ronan saw Harvey put some French fries into his mouth, so that counted as something.

Ronan could see Adam was restraining himself not to voice his opinion on Harvey’s judgement when Harvey assured them he didn’t need new underwear, or sleepwear, or school supplies. Ronan squeezed his hand and, while Harvey was distracted with the monstrosities displayed on the window of a phone cases shop, he slipped back into the shop they’d just left and bought a few packages of boxers in the size he estimated Harvey to be. Ronan saw Harvey eye the new bag Ronan reappeared with suspiciously, but he’d have to deal with it.

Adam had taken the day off work to spend it with them, but that Liz chick still managed to find something urgent to call him about when they were passing by a pet shop.

“What do you think about animals?” Ronan asked Harvey, while Adam took his call. Ronan thought he looked cute when he started gesticulating in exhasperation.

Harvey shrugged. Great. This was why Ronan didn’t attempt small talk.

Adam came back. Said he had to run by the clinic for a bit. Harvey didn’t complain when they all got back into the car.

It started raining again while Ronan and Harvey waited, parked outside the clinic.

Ronan put the radio on. He then switched it off and turned around in his seat.

“So what do you like doing? I mean—for fun,” he asked.

Harvey fixed his very dark eyes in him. He then looked down, and out the window, and back at Ronan. He shrugged.

“What did you do back home? Do you have any friends in here?” he added, meaning in town. “We can come visit whenever.”

_that’s ok_

“Do you miss your old place?” Ronan asked, because he was really not good at small talk.

_a bit_

Ronan didn’t get to ask anything else because Adam came back, hair wet from the rain.

“It’s freezing outside,” he said, turning the heating on.

On the way home, they took a detour through Henrietta to enrol Harvey in his new school—he’d preferred transfering, and apparently he’d said something regarding how everyone at his old school knew his mother to Adam. Ronan didn’t care either way, but Harvey going to Henrietta’s public middle school meant that, for starters, Harvey hadn’t chosen Aglionby so Ronan didn’t need to fight the war flashbacks. It also meant Adam’s own war flashbacks were not very willing to encourage him to go to Henrietta daily, so Ronan got to drive Harvey, and share some quality silence with him.

The tired man at the school office recognised Adam when he told him his name. Adam’s smile didn’t waver, so Ronan didn’t mention it when they finally got home.

It’d been a long day for everyone, so he didn’t insist on showing Harvey around the farm.

In the morning, he drove the kid to school.

“Would you like to see the cows when we get back tonight?” he asked. It was quite pointless, he knew, because Harvey was the type who believed in driving safely so he never showed Ronan his phone screen while Ronan was behind the wheel. That, or he really didn’t have anything to say, which was fair too. Ronan hoped he hadn’t taken to heart Adam’s offhanded comment on Ronan’s dislike of phones.

He saw Harvey’s shrug from the corner of his eye. Adam had said he’d check his wrist again during the weekend, to see if the cast was ready to come out.

Ronan nodded. He didn’t say anything else until they reached Henrietta’s public middle school. Ronan had the passing thought to ask Harvey how he was doing settling in, but again it was a _school_ and this was only his second day going there so it was probably just shit.

“I’ll be here when you get out,” Ronan reminded him. “Text if you need anything,” he added, because in his head it made him sound more like a parent.

He caught Harvey hesitating a bit before closing his door, but even after he’d expectantly waited for a full minute Harvey didn’t say anything. Or typed, or whatever.

Ronan sighed. He drove back home, and spent some time on the fields, and called Adam at Adam’s lunch break, and if he was constantly checking his phone’s watch it wasn’t because he was nervous because Harvey didn’t text him all morning.

Or perhaps he _was_ a little nervous, because, you know, technically phones weren’t allowed at school, but Harvey didn’t have any other way of communicating, not with his writing hand still on a cast.

He was thirty-five minutes early to pick him up.

Harvey looked exactly the same when he settled on the passenger seat.

“Shitty day?” Ronan asked, before reversing out of the parking lot. Harvey rested his head back onto the seat, which Ronan interpreted as a yes. “Perk up. You don’t have to get back there until Monday.”

Harvey, unsurprisingly, didn’t say anything until they arrived home, and then he took his backpack and his teenage angst and slowly walked inside, not even glancing at the decidedly _beautiful_ fields that were, you know, just _there_. And free to look at, because they were Ronan’s.

Adam wasn’t home yet—he was still working through the mountains of paperwork that had allowed Harvey to come and live in the Barns, and then Harvey’s mom was still out there making her mind on whether she wanted to fight to get her kid back or was just letting it all go. In Ronan’s opinion, she could go fuck herself. In Adam’s opinion—and the problem with this was that Adam’s opinion was usually very well-founded and helpful—they needed to be ready to face her in case she decided to show up at their doorstep. That was a metaphor, of course, because she wasn’t legally allowed to come near Harvey unless a judge gave her permission. But Adam had once casually mentioned a time when his dickhead of a father had shown up at St Agnes before his own court date, and they’d never spoken of that again because Adam didn’t look like he wanted to speak about it, but Ronan had nightmares about it periodically.

He had nightmares about all sorts of things, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. But still, Ronan was glad Adam would be ready in case such a problem arised.

That left Ronan to sort things out at home. Which was easy when it came to fixing fences and feeding cattle. Not so much when it came to agoraphobic kids.

When Ronan had asked him—and if that wasn’t proof of how much Ronan was _trying_ , he didn’t know what it was—Declan had said to give Harvey space. Ronan agreed with the principle, but he also remembered a time in his life when, if he’d been given all the space he’d thought he’d needed, he’d have unadvertedly ended Matthew’s life.

So he provided said space while he washed his car and made some tuna sandwiches, and then poured some juice into two glasses and brought his meal upstairs on a tray—that was something his mom used to do when they spent too long cooped up in their rooms, so he figured it was all right.

He knocked in Harvey’s door.

“Harvey, I’m coming in,” he said, because he wasn’t about to wait a million years for a vebal answer to come.

Harvey was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling. He and Adam had painted the whole room before Mrs Wintry White’s delightful visit, so Ronan knew the kid wasn’t going to find any mold in there.

“Having fun?” he asked, in what he hoped wasn’t a mocking tone. He _understood_ not wanting to get up. He placed the tray on the duvet, next to Harvey’s feet. “Move over. We’re having a picnic and then we’re going to see the cows.”

Harvey turned to be able to use his healthy arm to propel himself up. He didn’t look one bit excited about seeing the cows, but Ronan had decided he was going to get the kid outside of his room.

Harvey’s backpack had been abandoned on the chair by the desk. Ronan put it on the carpet, heavy with notebooks and books, and brought the chair closer to the bed.

He offered Harvey the plate with the sandwiches until the kid rolled his eyes and took one. Ronan nodded when he saw him take the first bite.

They ate in silence, because Harvey was already having difficulties with juggling his juice glass and his sandwiches with only one hand, and Ronan was already taking him out of his comfort zone by just being there.

When they finished, he told Harvey to be ready by the front door in ten minutes, while he brushed his teeth. He was expecting to have to drag him there, so when he found his newly-acquired kid studying the shoe rack as if it was going to bite him, he couldn’t help the surprised gasp that came out of his mouth.

Harvey flinched. Ronan pointed at some rubber boots at the very end of the rack that he barely remembered as having been Matthew’s at some point. He made a mental note to buy Harvey new boots of his own, sometime later. He congratulated himself because he wasn’t normally a person who made mental fucking notes.

“What’s your shoe size?”

 _6y_ , Harvey’s phone said.

They visited the cows. Ronan suggested Harvey could spend some time outside while he made dinner, as they waited for Adam to come home. Harvey shook his head and rushed back to the house.

“Is it because his mom locked him out of the house, that he only wants to stay inside?” Ronan whispered in Adam’s good ear, later that night, when they were both in bed.

“I suppose it could be that, yes,” Adam said. “I can try and talk to him in the morning about it.”

Ronan nodded, because Adam was always better at talking and shit. He then kissed Adam’s hair, because he wasn’t sure Adam had seen his nod in the dark.

“He likes tuna sandwiches,” Ronan said.

“Did he get any homework done?”

Ronan snorted. “You can ask him tomorrow that, too.”

“I will, but if he needs help he’s going to have to come to you, because I have a meeting with a lawyer before lunch. She seemed very nice on the phone and agreed to see me on a Saturday, so I don’t have to beg the day off at the clinic.”

Ronan sighed. “How many more lawyers are you going to consult?”

“I don’t know. I just want to be sure nothing’s going to go wrong, you know?”

Ronan knew. That’s why he was trying not to keep count of how many hours a day Adam could be doing homework with Harvey that he was spending at fancy lawyers’ offices. He knew Adam was doing it for Harvey as well as for himself. He’d probably get over that phase in a couple of weeks anyway.

He kept quiet and let himself slowly fall asleep.

A soft knock on the door rose him what felt like seconds after.

There was light coming from the corridor.

Ronan leapt out of the bed.

Harvey was there when he opened the door, shivering lightly in his new pajamas. He held his phone for Ronan to see—Ronan blinked at the sudden brightness of the screen.

 _cant sleep_ , it said.

Ronan blinked again.

“Did something—happen?” he asked, looking behind Harvey in case some old nightmare of his had decided to break into the house.

Harvey started typing.

_dr parrish said he could give me something to help me sleep if I couldnt. Didnt mean to wake u_

Ronan hadn’t known Harvey called Adam _Dr Parrish._ He shook his head.

“Don’t worry, kid. I’ll just wake Adam—”

“I’m awake,” Adam said from the bed, with that mellific voice he got when he was still asleep. “I’m coming, let me just find my slippers.”

Harvey took a step back into the lit corridor, now that he didn’t need Ronan to read from his phone anymore. Adam kissed Ronan’s cheek when he passed by him.

“Do you need—”

“It’s all right. Go back to sleep,” Adam said, before following Harvey back to his room.

Ronan left the door open and went back to bed. When he finally fell asleep, closer to dawn than midnight, Adam hadn’t returned.


	7. Chapter 7

“So there was this Mrs Willow lady, sitting there like she fucking owned the place, and she said—she had this stupid voice, let me tell you—Mr Lynch, she said, this might be a new record. Mr Parker has only been with us for ten days and he is already on the verge of failing two core subjects— ”

Adam hadn’t expected everything to go perfectly well in an instant, of course not, but there were quite a few things that were not really working out, even after ten days, and they made Adam want to scream in the sleeping cattle barn until the cows woke up. He didn’t, of course, because he was sure Ronan had probably already tried that and they hadn’t been shocked awake, and because he was supposed to be the one in control here so he _had to_ stay in control.

“And then she showed me a test Harvey had done—It was Science, I think the one you helped him with?”

For starters, Adam suspected Harvey had some type of food allergy, or at least a mild intolerance—he didn’t eat a lot, and that was another issue to also be tackled at a further date, but what little he did eat didn’t seem to sit very well with his stomach. He of course didn’t _say_ which types of food he preferred, or which ones he disliked. He just ate everything Ronan threw at him, after picking at it for a while, and then woke up in the middle of the night with stomach cramps.

“It was fucking terrible. He’d only answered two questions—the kid has terrible handwriting, by the way. Do you think it’s too late to make him do calligraphy worksheets?”

Adam had tried giving him a very light sleep-inducing pill meant for kids half his size, and when that didn’t work he’d tried with one a bit stronger, which _had_ helped him sleep but he’d still woken up with stomach ache. They were currently trying a tea concoction suggested by Maura that was supposed to soothe digestions, but Adam had a feeling it wouldn’t work. It provided an unique fragrance coming from the pantry, though—Adam couldn’t wait for Opal’s next visit to show her.

He’d need to get Harvey tested for allergies, anyway, but he was trying to prevent any more school-missing, after having seen his attendance record at his previous school.

“Anyway, what did that woman expect, if the kid had only been to two fucking classes before the test.”

Harvey didn’t like school. Adam didn’t know if he _disliked_ it—Harvey didn’t just _tell_ Ronan and Adam stuff like that—but he certainly didn’t look excited to go there. Not any preference for any subject or any teacher.

“So I asked her which was the other subject he was failing, and hear this out—Tech-fucking-nology. Apparently, there was this project group thing? They had to chunk wood or something. And Harvey couldn’t pull his weight because of the cast, so he got in a fight with another kid. I’d like to have seen that, a fight over _text_.”

Harvey had no hobbies, he didn’t go outside his room unless either Adam or Ronan told him several times to do so and then accompanied him on his trip.

He hadn’t spoken outloud yet.

“Anyway. I listened to her and even nodded from time to time, and meanwhile Harvey was sitting there, still a bit damp from the rain, in that super uncomfortable chair—I bet they do it on purpose, like they used to do with Cold War spies interrogations? They’d put you in a shitty chair so you got all nervous and started telling them your shit?”

Adam was starting to wonder if Sadie White had been right—they were not really well-qualified to take care of a child.

He nodded, waiting for Ronan to _finally_ get to the point of the story where he found out what had _really_ happened.

“So I waited until she was all done, and then I stood up, and told her she was an insensitive bitch to blame poor academic results on a kid who has obviously been abused and traumatized.”

“You can’t just bully Harvey’s teachers, Ronan!”

Ronan dismissed his worry with an easy wave and took another swing of his beer.

“It’s the fucking least I could have told her. I just took Harvey and left, and guess what—he _smiled_ at me when we were in the car!”

Adam bit his bottom lip not to snap at Ronan.

Adam had thought it would be more manageable—not easy, but just better than this. He thought _he_ would be better. Instead, he was just panicking over all the things that were not working while Ronan was out there bonding with Harvey over their mutual hate of a teacher.

“You’re teaching him it’s okay to resort to violence and petty names when something doesn’t go as you expected,” he explained, trying to stay calm, well aware he sounded like he was speaking to a five year old.

Ronan’s eyes narrowed, but he kept talking.

“It was a pretty cool afternoon, after that. He helped me clean the barns and was a great kitchen helper with dinner. He’s a great kid, you know?”

Adam thought so, too, and he also wanted to go with them to see the cows. He was glad Harvey was beginning to open up with Ronan, he _was_ —he just didn’t agree with Ronan’s methods.

“Perhaps I should go with you to your next parent-teacher conference,” he said, hoping Ronan would drop the subject.

Of course, Ronan didn’t drop the subject.

“Nothing was stopping you from coming to this one.”

Adam got up. There wasn’t a lot he could do stop his thoughts from spiraling before he said something he’d regret, but he could wash some of the dishes waiting in the sink. The coldness of the water on his forearms managed to annoy him, for some reason. He turned the hot water on.

“I only got out at six,” Adam said, but in his wanting to wait until he was sure there’d be no anger seeping through his voice he’d lost too many seconds. Ronan would see right through him. “The clinic is an hour away from Harvey’s school,” he unnecessarily added.

Ronan huffed.

“Right. You are aware you got four weeks of vacation, right?”

Adam was aware. He’d thought about it—it’d mean spending the mornings with Ronan working in the farm and the evenings helping Harvey with his homework.

“It’s _unpaid_ leave, Ronan.”

It wasn’t like they’d get homeless or Harvey’d get taken away if Adam stopped working for a month. They had savings, and one of the conditions Adam had set on stone when he’d first agreed to move to the Barns was that they opened a shared savings account and both contributed the exact same amount to it every month. Common expenses were withdrawn from that account—mainly food and gas, because it was magic that kept the electricity at the Barns going.

All expenses concerning Harvey would be coming from that account, too.

There was enough in there so that nobody would starve if Adam got it easier for a month. He wasn’t sure it was the right moment, though—he just needed to figure everything else out first. He needed to push himself a little bit harder now so that he’d get to enjoy himself later.

Later, when they were settled enough. Later, when Adam knew how to act around Harvey for longer than a few minutes at a time.

“You cared enough to make that stupid lemon pie,” Ronan reminded him. Adam didn’t turn to see what his face was doing—he focused on the dishes instead.

“I _do_ care,” he said, through gritted teeth. He was starting to lose his patience—he scrubbed the glass he was washing a bit harder.

“Then _be_ here.”

“I _am_ here!”

The glass fell from Adam’s hands and clonked at the bottom of the sink.

He turned around. Ronan was still nursing his beer, eyes misty but still poignant when they pierced right through Adam.

The tap kept running. Adam left the kitchen.

If it hadn’t been raining so hard, he’d have gone outside. He needed to breathe, he needed to think, he needed to _plan_. He needed to stop being unhelpful and to start being a parent.

Ronan needed him. Harvey needed him.

He went upstairs and started cleaning the bathroom. The smell of bleach usually calmed him—if it was time to clean it meant the worst was over with and you just needed to pick after yourself. That night it only made his already revolted stomach dizzier.

He heard Harvey’s door opening.

He flushed the toilet.

“You left your towel on the floor,” he said. “Please hang it after you take a shower next time.”

Harvey, predictably, didn’t say anything. _Isn’t he talking yet?_ , Sadie White had asked, when she’d phoned Adam earlier that week. _You’re a pediatrician, Dr Parrish. Is that normal?_

When Adam looked, Harvey was hovering at the top of the stairs.

“We should also change your bed sheets,” Adam said. “I’ll help you,” he added, because it’d been only about four weeks since Harvey’s wrist had been casted.

Harvey followed him to his room, looking like he was expecting a bomb to explode.

Adam didn’t dwell on that—he _was_ trying to keep his voice even and his anger in check. He didn’t think Harvey had heard Ronan and him fight, all the way from the upper floor, so they should be all right.

“Well, didn’t I ask that you tidied a bit? You need to let some air in here sometimes—this smells worse than Chainsaw’s cage when she was a baby!” Adam was trying for a joke, but he wasn’t completely sure it was working.

He opened the window, but only a crack. The storm outside was deafening, so Adam turned his good ear towards the room.

Harvey was still by the door.

“Well? What else needs washing?” he asked.

Harvey didn’t answer. He didn’t make to pick his phone, or the stack of blank paper neatly resting on his desk, untouched since Adam himself had put it there a week ago. Paper which was supposed to have been put to good use for Harvey’s school assignments.

“Is Ronan even checking if you have homework?”

Harvey’s eyes, which until then hadn’t left Adam’s, darted through the room. They stopped briefly at Adam’s hands, that still held the toilet brush.

Adam looked down. He didn’t remember why he’d brought a toilet brush into Harvey’s room. A toilet brush did _not_ belong in Harvey’s room.

He looked back at Harvey.

He understood.

Adam forced himself to relax his posture.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He made himself move towards the door—Harvey stepped aside to let him pass. “I should probably go and finish with the bathroom. You can ask Ronan for help with your sheets, or we can just leave it for some other time,” he said, in what he hoped was a softer voice. He only then realized he’d probably been snapping at Harvey the whole time.

He closed the bathroom door behind himself, and put away the toilet brush. He washed his hands thoroughly with freezing-cold water.

The mirror said he looked angry.

Adam refused to let it lie to him.

He _wasn’t_ angry. Just ashamed and tired and highly frustrated, yes, but not angry. His face just didn’t know how to show that.

He went downstairs and found Ronan in the living room, staring at the unlit hearth.

“I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. It’s been harder than I expected. I’ll think about taking some days off, okay?” he said, keeping a few feet away until he learnt just how mad Ronan was at him.

Ronan turned around. For a few seconds, they just stared at each other.

“My dad was never around, you know?” Ronan whispered then, breaking Adam’s heart in at least fifty pieces.

“Fuck,” Adam said. He closed the distance between them and didn’t hesitate before cupping Ronan’s face.

“Hey,” Ronan said. He didn’t sound mad. Adam thought he had every right to be mad.

“Hey. I’m sorry. You’re right. I just need to try harder.” Adam’s fingertips smothered Ronan’s already smooth cheeks.

“We’ll figure it out,” Ronan said. Adam nodded.

They stared at each other in silence, letting the warmth of the house surround them.

It was still storming outside.

The back door rattled, awakening them both. Adam dried his hands on a kitchen towel.

“Didn’t you lock the door?” Ronan asked, already halfway to the laundry room to get it properly bolted. It would not stop shaking and banging against its frame when it was as windy as that night.

“Uh?” Adam was inspecting the glass he’d dropped earlier, in case he’d damaged it. “You _howled_ at me the moment I came home that you’d washed my cum-filled boxers, all the way _from the laundry room_.”

“Yeah, you should’ve seen the look on Harvey’s face when—”

Adam dropped the glass again. It shattered on the floor.

“Harvey.”

They both ran outside.


	8. Chapter 8

This was all a big, big mistake. It’d been a mistake already when he’d gone to Dr Parrish’s clinic, and he just _knew_ he should’ve kept his big mouth closed and endured the pain in his wrist.

It hadn’t been _that_ bad, and it’d have healed eventually, Dr Parrish’d said. Maybe not as good as it was healing now, but—

A crooked wrist was probably better than _this_.

It was raining. Back home it also rained all the time. But rain in this place just was—different. It smelt weird, and it made the animals restless, or at least it looked like that to him. Ronan was never mad when he got mud into the house, though. He’d bought him some boots of his own and explicitly said to get them all muddy. He kept nagging so that Harvey would go out of the house.

Harvey didn’t like going out.

Or, he didn’t mind the going out part, but he hated being outside. Especially when he didn’t have a key. He was never sure if he’d be allowed back in, after all. Mom hadn’t always let him go back inside, but at least she’d never actually left him out screaming when it was raining.

He didn’t have a key to the house now, either, but Ronan only locked the door at night. Or when it was windy, like tonight, because the back door kept making noise.

So, the thing was, Harvey was making a big, big mistake. He’d left the house, in the middle of a storm, without telling anybody he was going out. He’d be lucky if Ronan just locked the door after him and didn’t think to check his bedroom until morning—maybe he’d be able to slip back inside when Ronan got out to feed the cattle, before Dr Parrish woke up. If they found out he’d left—

Harvey shuddered and hugged his knees, making himself smaller against the hay.

They were already mad and yelling because of Harvey. They’d be _furious_.

Ronan had been terrifying to watch when he’d fought with Mrs Willow—he’d stared at her and Harvey thought she’d burst a vein or something. It’d been very nice—Ronan was _defending_ him. He really didn’t want Ronan to look at him like he’d looked at her.

And Dr Parrish—he hadn’t even raised his voice, but Harvey had felt like running, after he’d told him all the things he was doing wrong at keeping his room neat. He hadn’t even sounded disappointed, just—Not like the Dr Parrish who kept coming at night to give Harvey stuff that was supposed to help him sleep, or the one who’d fixed everything with the social workers. He missed the Dr Parrish who’d said he’d do his best to help Harvey and he _had._ It was probably Harvey’s fault that that Dr Parrish was gone now, because Harvey was just being annoying and messing it all up and—

It was warm inside the barn, but Harvey was shivering.

He was just _so_ stupid. He was testing everyone’s patience and he should have told Dr Parrish about his test and he should have cleaned up like they’d asked him to _and_ he was still not talking to them.

He knew what was going to happen. His mom was going to make up her mind, and it didn’t even matter if she’d want to get him back or not, because Ronan and Dr Parrish were going to realize how much work he was and how he was messing their perfect life just by being around and they’d tell him they were sorry but it was time for him to go back.

And instead of trying to delay that as much as possible, here he was, hiding from the rain, betraying their trust! He didn’t even know if when he’d be able to go back inside—

“Harvey!” The heavy door to the barn opened.

He flinched.

“Harvey, are you in here?” That was Dr Parrish. What was he doing here? Had he gone outside to look for him _in the rain_?

Harvey curled a bit more into himself—if he’d braved the cold to come get him, Dr Parrish must be really, _really_ mad.

“I can’t see anything. Fuck.” Ronan was there too?

Harvey bit his bottom lip and tried to regulate his breathing. He didn’t want to be found out, so he couldn’t make any noise. With luck, what little light came in from outside wasn’t enough to let them see Harvey. If he just stayed very still—

“There was a lamp somewhere in here—”

Dr Parrish found what he’d been looking for, because Harvey found himself blinded by the sudden brightness.

“Harvey!”

Before he’d had time to think about what he could do to fix this mess he’d created for himself, Harvey found himself drawn into Ronan’s chest.

He gasped for air, hands flailing around as he tried to get back his balance. Ronan’s shirt was wet and cold but he was stroking his hair _so gently_ Harvey felt like crying. And then Dr Parrish said, closer than he’d expected, that Ronan needed to be careful with Harvey’s wrist, and Harvey lost it.

He sobbed and wailed and hung to Ronan’s shirt like he was afraid Ronan was going to leave. But Ronan didn’t yell at him to get away, or told him he was disgusting for getting snot all over his neck.

Ronan held him until Harvey felt too embarrassed to keep being held, and only then Ronan let him go.

“Are you hurt?” Dr Parrish asked then, kneeling before him. He cleaned his burning and still soaked cheeks with the back of his hand, as if Harvey was a toddler. He looked more like the Dr Parrish he knew, though, so Harvey didn’t mind much.

He shook his head.

Dr Parrish nodded. He stood up and took the camping lamp.

“Come inside?” he asked. He offered Harvey his hand, to help him get back on his feet.

Harvey took the hand. He followed them, as they rushed under the rain towards the house. They got in through the laundry room door, and Ronan locked it. Dr Parrish threw dry towels over everyone’s heads.

As Harvey removed his drenched hoodie—a new one they’d just bought him the previous weekend—he realized both Ronan and Dr Parrish were barefoot.

He felt like crying again. He opened his mouth—he wanted to speak. He needed to apologize, he _owed_ it to them.

The words just didn’t come.

They were both watching him, waiting.

Harvey closed his mouth. He took his phone out of his back pocket, and hoped it still worked after the bath he’d given it.

 _I’m really sorry,_ Harvey typed. He stopped there to show it to them, but he wanted to say more. Dr Parrish’s hand on his arm stilled him.

“We’re not mad. We were just worried,” he said. “Right, Ronan?”

“Yes.”

Harvey blinked. He didn’t know what felt so wrong, so he couldn’t even begin to fix it.

_i really want to stay here. I didn’t want to run away or anything. i didnt mean to make you fight_

“We fight sometimes,” Dr Parrish said. “I get why that might make you nervous, but it doesn’t mean it’s your fault. It’s not, really. It was mine this time. I am sorry, too. For that, and for frightening you.” He smiled.

Harvey stared at him for what felt like a long time, before he smiled too.

_i wasn’t nervous_

Ronan snorted.

“’Course not. We’re watching a movie right now. Attendance is com-pul-so-ry—I’m gonna start a fire right now.”

 _it’s late_ , Harvey said to Dr Parrish, who didn’t follow Ronan because he was throwing their wet towels into the washing machine. Everyone got up really early in that house.

“Don’t worry, you can go to sleep whenever you want. Just get warm first, okay?”

Dr Parrish was looking at him, waiting patiently for his answer. His mom had never wanted to wait for him—she’d only get mad and yell that he was mocking her when he didn’t speak.

He’d only known Dr Parrish for like _a month_ , and Dr Parrish was already being kinder to him than his mom had ever been.

“I’m truly sorry, though. I was having a not-so-great day and it was very wrong of me to take it out with you. I will not let it happen again, I promise.”

Harvey swallowed. He nodded.

“You weren’t coming so I’ve already chosen a movie!” Ronan called for them.

Dr Parrish rolled his eyes.

“I hope you like car explosions—Bet you whatever we’re seeing has at least _five of them_ ,” he said. And he _winked_ , before switching the lights off.

Harvey followed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it is done! Thank you so much for the amazing support and love this story got—I honestly only started writing it because I couldn't get the idea out of my head, but I wasn't really expecting so many people to like it! So thanks again for every kudo and comment!
> 
> I actually have some ideas for kinda spin-off one shots for this, but (I know, I always say this, I'm sorry) I don't know if I'll ever write them or not. However, you can always come tell me headcanons or whatever you want on [my tumblr](https://hklnvgl.tumblr.com/) (all posts related to this story are tagged as #the mirror i stare into). ♥


End file.
